Tossing and Turning
by RenegadeFlight
Summary: In which Ichigo finds himself in the midst of the last month of his senior year, confused and hopelessly lost and spending too many nights out trying to understand a person who does not want to be defined. Grimmichi AU. M for language.
1. Chapter 1

**New username, new fic. Hopefully a better story than those I've written before, otherwise my whole writing career has been pretty useless. **

**If you are looking for intensely smutty man sex please go look at another story as this one probably won't have any. **

Everyone in life has a story. It's that one story we tell when we're both drunk and sober with equal accuracy and we tell it to our kids and grandkids and at parties with people we don't like but want to impress and it is probably the story of the highest point of your life.

My story began senior year, when the maniac from my math class known as Grimmjow Jaegerjaques pressed his face against my bedroom window and rapped the national anthem out on the glass with his knuckles.

It was a little after midnight, and I was dead asleep.

By dead, I mean that you were more likely to get a reply from knocking on coffin lids than shouting directly into my ear. Maybe my body knew that the most significant chunk of my senior year was about to begin. Maybe it was the repeated scream of "Get your safety cone head out here and your ass in gear because we are about to pull the greatest prank in the history of senior pranks!"

All I knew was that it got me up and into Grimmjow's shitty excuse for a Chevy in less than five minutes.

We drove fast through the empty streets. Grimmjow tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and hummed as he wove through invisible traffic. Every now and then, a stray piece of light leaked into the window and bounced off his electric blue hair.

"So, what exactly is the greatest senior prank, Commander?" I said, trying to fill the silence.

"Have you ever heard of The Twits?" He replied. "There should be a copy next to your feet."

I picked up a book which cover depicted a horrifically ugly beast of a woman, whose teeth stuck out from her bottom lip like an alligator's jaws.

"Where the hell do you find books like this? The only resemblance to our school in this is when you squint and the lady looks like Mrs. Unohana's dog."

The Chevy screamed to a halt in front of our school. We both got out and stood under a lamppost in front of the school.

"Isn't the resemblance funny? Unfortunately, we are not going to be using the cover. We are using what's on the _inside."_

Grimmjow grabbed the book from me and flipped through the book until he got to a page with a swarm of birds turning all of the furniture over in a living room and pressing it to the ceiling.

"In this scene, these birds are taking revenge on Mrs. Unohana's ugly-ass bulldog, who wants to bake them all in to a pie. They are taking all of the furniture and gluing it to the ceiling –" I cut him off.

"Stop right there. This is impossible. Why the hell did you wake me up for something stupid like this? We are _Not _turning the whole school upside down."

Trying to describe Grimmjow's grin of triumph is sort of like trying to describe how a caterpillar knows to spin its cocoon: we have no idea how to start either answer and both are probably miracles of nature.

I ran past him and blasted through the side door leading to the cafeteria.

A massive group of seniors and strangers were in long lines, passing tables up a network of scaffolding that led all the way to the top, where their bottoms were painted with something and held against the ceiling until they dried. Grimmjow pulled a bottle from his pocket called 'Elephant Force.'

"They use this shit in the army to hold their boots and equipment together or something*. Thank the universe our ceilings are so low or this would have never worked."

The ceilings _were_ low, and seemingly sturdy enough to support our lunch tables and chairs being Elephant Forced to them. Only Grimmjow would think of something so ridiculous, so unconventionally genius for a senior prank.

He tapped me on the shoulder and pulled me towards the doors leading onto the campus. "Don't forget Orange, you have a job to do."

It took less than a minute for me to jimmy open the lock holding the portable gates closed with the provided bobby pin and a twisted paper clip. Grimmjow shouted an order, and a group of strangers ran through the open entrance, toting paint buckets filled with the sticky substance. I watched them scurry like ants to the first portable.

Honestly, the teachers should really consider locking their doors in the future.

We sat on a bench on the courtyard while they finished up inside, alternating between small talk and staring at the crumbly foundations of our school.

"You know," he started after a particularly long stint of silence. "We've only got a month left here. We've done the prank. We finished exams. What's left to do?"

I shrugged. There really wasn't anything left.

The seniors before us had laid out all the traditions, and we had followed them, and we made more traditions for next year, and we had survived the four hardest years of our lives so far. "Prom, I guess," Is what I ended up saying. "And graduation and the sobfest."

Grimmjow chuckled at the last one.

"Ten dollars Rukia cries like a baby during the sobfest."

"Double it and add on that Tatsuki comes out to Orihime."

Cheering reverberated around the campus, and a crowd of people rushed into the courtyard, surrounding the bench and forming a ring around Grimmjow.

His face changed from easygoing to serious, holding up his arm to silence the mob.

You could have heard the flap of a butterfly's wings.

"We have just accomplished possibly the greatest thing a bunch of young adults can do when they get together at-" he checked his watch. "One twenty-two in the morning. Most of us will end up dead or unsuccessful in five to ten years but at least, in this one moment, we did something_ fantastic."_

The pack went insane, cheering and screaming and throwing gluestained rags and brushes into the air like graduation hats, then crying and hugging each other like it was right before the bomb dropped and we all died. Grimmjow found me somehow, everyone parting for him like Moses and the Red Sea. He gave me a cocky, crazy grin.

"You wanna get out of here?"

I nodded and screamed yes over the sea of voices. We got to his car and sped down the road and I don't think I've ever been happier at one thirty seven in the morning.

***Elephant Force does not exist to my knowledge. If it did/does, God help us.**

**I don't know where this is going. I'm just sort of watching it run. I hope you guys watch too.**


	2. Chapter 2

**I've been listening to Mayday Parade. They're pretty good.**

**The places in this fic are real, but I'll leave where they are up to you.**

We had the next three days off of school so the staff could recuperate from what is now known as The Night we Flipped the World. Grimmjow actually came through my window and sat at my desk, banging the stapler against my bedpost until I grabbed the desk appliance from him and chucked it out the still open window on the first night.

"Are you _trying _to wake up my whole family?" I hissed at him. I tried to hide that my heart was pounding adrenaline through my body. Not everyone gets visits from the blue haired demon, and two in as many nights was unheard of.

Grimmjow pointed out the window at the dark streets.

"You're burning twilight. Get out of your bed Kurosaki we have shit to do."

I groaned but rolled out of the bed anyways, tugging on old jeans and a dark blue long sleeve before following him out the window and into the open door of the Chevy.

Grimmjow was one of those drivers who used all gas and no brakes like time was too short to waste in a car, so I didn't have a chance to fall asleep as the Chevy bounced and bucked its way to our destination.

After what must have been the most haphazard parallel park in history(there are streaks of rubber smoking from the road that weren't there before), Grimmjow got out and took a deep breath of the cool air, stretching his arm and cracking his neck.

He had taken us to a long street crammed with artsy stores and little independent restaurants. Flyers advertising concerts from local up-and-coming bands and garage sales coated the brick buildings where there wasn't graffiti. Ivy twisted over everything, making the street look like it grew from the ground, like it belonged there. I trailed my fingers absently over a spray painted gopher face.

We walked slowly down the left side of the street until Grimmjow stopped at a place called Peacock Threads. He knocked on the darkened glass until the door burst open, revealing a skinny man in a deep purple shirt and boxers. He ran a hand through his shoulder length black hair and glared daggers at us. I wonder if Grimmjow knocked on everyone's windows at ungodly times.

"I don't know what time it is, but there is no sunlight and I do not work when there is no sunlight so go away now and Let. Me. Sleep."

"It's already two. I need incense Feather Boy."

Looking closer, the young man _did_ have feathers in his hair, a red and yellow one woven together amongst the black. For a moment, I couldn't tell if he was going to call the cops or kill us himself. But he shoved the door open and flipped the light switch.

"God, I can't argue with you right now. Just hurry up you crippled bastard."

Grimmjow made a beeline for the back of the store while I leaned against the counter, still not fully awake. The man with the feathers was named Yumichika. He made tea while he talked, surprisingly animated for not being a night owl.

"He's so lucky I have a weakness for blue hair. Seriously, going off the radar for four-and-a-half years and then showing up wanting incense in the middle of the night. I remember when he was afraid of the dark and dragged a teddy bear around in elementary school."

The tea finished brewing and he poured us each a mugful. I took mine and sipped slowly, savoring the taste. Yumichika chugged his.

"We graduate in a little over a month," I end up saying. "I don't think college will be able to handle Grimmjow."

Crashing noises came from the back, quickly followed by swears and Grimmjow sprinting towards the counter, a handful of black and white incense sticks and a pink one sticking out of his ponytail.

"How much for all these, Yumi?" He fanned the sticks out on the counter like a deck of cards next to my half-empty mug and reached into his pocket. Yumichika waved off his attempts to pay.

"Just take them, you already know I'm not going to charge you. Make sure you use them for something worthwhile. If I catch you doing drugs I will have your ass."

"What would I do without a friend like you Yumi? Gosh, I think I'm tearing up!" Grimmjow stuffed the incense into his jacket pocket and gave Yumichika a clap on the back. He ran out and I heard an excited yell and the Chevy roaring down the street. Yumichika shook his head, a smile laying at the corners of his mouth.

"Forget college, I don't think the rest of the world is ready for Grimmjow."

He grabbed a business card for the store from a pile next to the register and pressed it to my palm before I walked out the door.

"I'm still half asleep," he whispered. "But I can tell you're adorable and I think you'll want a job to distract your broken heart. Grimmjow always breaks things and I don't think you've loved that many people before."

I pocketed the card and walked out quickly, trying to pretend I didn't hear what he said. If a half-dead most likely homosexual college student could see my crush after five minutes, I hope to God that Grimmjow's too busy running forwards to look back and see me caught in his wake.

After Grimmjow's victory lap around the block(free incense was hard to come by apparently), we walked the street until it curved to a dead end, a sign advertising a dance studio creaking gently on rusted hinges. Grimmjow pressed his hand against the door, rough wood coming into contact with calloused fingers.

"Pick the lock, Kurosaki." My fingers flew and he pushed me inside, closing the door quickly behind us.

A hand brushed my hip, and I flinched and tripped, falling on my ass in what I'm sure would have been very graceful looking if it wasn't so dark.

"Fuck, sorry," he muttered. The light sputtered to life, an old light bulb with a worn shade dangling from the ceiling. I was sitting on a staircase. "Get p, you're hiding the words."

I looked down, and on the front part of each step there was bold black lettering painted on a white background. Standing up and stepping back, it looked like the whole place was one giant lump of color, one painting swirling into another, a cockatiel flying from a rainforest of slinkies and silly string to a guitar with the eyes of an owl peeking out from the center hole. It was a world trapped on brick.

"The evenings, mornings, afternoons," Grimmjow began to recite, closing his eyes.

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons: I know the voices dying with a dying fall, beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?" We walked slowly up the staircase, creaks and groans following our footsteps.

"What poem?" I asked.

"The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot."

"Strange poem."

"Poets are weird."

As it turned out, the dance studio was not a dance studio but a night owl Mexican dive that served us steaming burritos in less than five minutes, like they were expecting us at three in the morning. Grimmjow picked at his roll of greasy meat and rice while I wolfed half of mine down before noticing his lack of an appetite and following suit, picking at the remains of mine as well.

"Wouldn't it be great if every night was like this?"

Grimmjow took a slow bite out of his food, talking around the lump of tortilla in his mouth. "By day, we're completely lost seniors with no idea about our future. But, at night," He chucks the rest of his burrito after a few more bites and pays for both of ours before I can pull together loose change from my jeans.

We're like superheroes, running around liberating incense and eating Spanish comestibles from secret hideaways."

I shrug.

"I guess, but we all have to grow up at some point. Our parents did, and so did their parents before them. We can't break the chain because then the whole system fails."

"Chains are always missing a few links."

My eyebrows raised slightly. "Are you suggesting that we're the missing links?"

"I guess that's a matter of following your expectations and following your personal desires." His eyes, I swear they were one hundred times brighter than the light on the staircase, like he already knows everything about the future and he's trying to let one of us fall easily.

I had that funny feeling like when you look up at the stars and you want to go catch them but at the same time you know you'll never get to them, not only because you're stuck to the ground but they're also already gone and what you're seeing is the light of dead celestial bodies and I worry that when I finally run Grimmjow's long illustrious road of fame and catch up to where the man himself should be he'll already be long gone just like them.

**Hahaha. I'm so tired. I've gotten a lot of support on this story though for just getting back. You guys are awesome, seriously. **


	3. Chapter 3

**Oh look here I am late again. **

**This is probably going to end within the next five chapters just warning you I don't intend for this to be long. **

**I am sleep deprived. **

**What even is free time.**

When I woke up my room reeked of incense. I lurched over and shoved the window open, gagging at the overwhelming smell of flowers. The sun beamed directly into my line of vision, black spots dancing behind my eyelids every time I blinked.

I checked my watch. Noon. I was never much of a morning person, and Grimmjow's midnight romps weren't helping me become one.

A knock sounds at my door. I let out something between a yawn and a 'come on in'.

Surprisingly enough, it's my Dad.

He walks in hesitantly, staring at the walls and my desk. I realize it's been months since he's been in my room, as strange as it sounds.

"You moved the desk," he remarked. "It used to be next to the bed."

I shrug. "Needed a change."

He stares at me and I realize he's as uncomfortable as I am.

"Damn," he sighs and sits next to me on the bed, running his hand over graying stubble.

"Look at you, one foot out the door and the other in some fancy college. The girls are starting high school, and where does that leave an old dude like me when you all graduate?"

I don't know whether I should hug him or not, so I rub my palms against my knees and crack my neck. "Nah, Yuzu won't leave. She'll go to community college and stay close to home. Karin will visit too but she doesn't like admitting it."

If he notices I didn't mention anything about me visiting, he doesn't comment about it. Instead, he scrunches up his face and covers his nose with his hand.

"Why does it reek of flowers in here?"

The day literally crawls by. I flip my pencil over and around my fingers, a bad habit I picked up from my friend Renji. I looked out the window every five minutes, half expecting blue eyes to stare back. A bird tapped on the glass and I nearly sprained my ankle turning around.

"Fuck," I muttered. This was ridiculous. I got up and tugged on a shirt. Yuzu stops me on the way out.

"Where are you going Ichigo?" Her voice is high and nervous, like I'm going to leave and never come back.

I tousle her hair.

"Just a walk. I'll be home before dinner." She doesn't look very assured.

"Stay away from strangers and don't you dare miss dinner! It's pork tonight and Dad will kill you if you miss another family meal!"

Karin's voice echoes from the living room. "He's a big boy now Yuzu, he can take care f himself. Don't waste your time fussing over him."

I pat Yuzu on the back and nudge the door open with my hip. "Yeah, she should be worrying about you and Toushiro!"

The door shuts on the death threats as I jog away from the house.

Yumichika looks like hell when I reach Peacock Threads. He's slumped over the counter in another long sleeve and sweats, ignoring a customer trying to pay for a bag embroidered with ten kinds of flowers that form an open eye. I move behind the register and take the tiny lump of cash she's trying to offer him and gesture sharply towards the door. She leaves in a rush. I shut the door behind her and flip the sign to "closed".

"It's like you already work here."

I lean against the counter.

"What happened?"

He slides to the floor and curls up into a ball. In any other instance, this probably would have been amusing.

"Boyfriend's in the hospital. Cancer. Surgery today."

My shock is more about how he's still running the shop instead of spending every second at the hospital rather than his sexuality. His shoulders begin to shake.

"I can't even s-see him. What if he doesn't make it?"

Yumichika turns to face upwards and I notice that his pupils are dilated. Gripping my wrist, he tugs down his sleeve with his free hand. There's a clean puncture mark in the vein threading over the crook of his elbow, a bite from a one fanged snake.

"I couldn't help it," he whispers. I crouch down next to him.

"How much do you love this guy?"

A hand grabs my throat, squeezing hard. I gag and fall backwards, Yumichika's bony knees pressing into my chest. He pulls up his shirt. I can see his ribs jutting out from his chest, his sternum a sharp point stretched over pale skin. There are probably fifty faded scars, white lines slicing up the skin from beneath his ribs to over his hipbone and disappearing below the like of his pants. All of them are neat and too clean to be caused by accident.

"I started drugs and cutting to get rid of the drugs and he cured me of everything and I'm not going to be there for him because of the _Mother. Fucking. Drugs._"

His eyes burn white hot before he collapses to the side of me, shaking and slightly hyperventilating. For being at least two years older and only a couple inches shorter than me, he's light like a bird with hollow bones.

"Which car is yours? We're going for a drive."

I sit in the chair outside the operating room while Yumichika talks to his boyfriend inside. Finding the hospital was easy. This is a small town. Driving the car was the challenge; I suck at driving stick and his stick shift kept jamming between fifth and sixth gear.

Yumichika comes out of the room. He's still pale, but it looks like the drugs have worn off. 

"You will never speak of the past three hours."

I nod.

"And you have a job whenever you want one. Where should I drop you off?"

We drive in silence. Yumichika handles the stick shift with the skill and grace that I definitely did not have when I was driving.

"Turn here and go to the end of the street. My house is the light blue one."

He stops me before I get out. "So did you show up at my shop for relationship advice or do you have this little internal monitor that draws you to broken people?"

"Broken people?"

Yumichika lets go of my shoulder and pulls my door shut, rolling down the window.

"You're not an angel. You can't magically fix people with your love. They have to fix themselves."

The car backs out of the driveway and pauses before speeding off.

"Thanks for helping out my drugged up ass though."

Yuzu attacks me with a hug before I get the door all the way open.

"Ichigo! I thought you forgot! Where were you? What happened to a little bit?!"

"Time flies when you're having fun. I have to go do senior things now. I'll eat dinner in my room."

"Oh no, it's family night! We're playing Monopoly! If you don't get over here I'm going to feed your dinner to the cat next door!"

Karin will never change.

There's no tap at my window and I still don't sleep. I can still smell the flowers.

**I'm too busy to go over and edit this, so if you see something message me with the problem. This chapter is kind of weird, but life isn't all about adventures with fantastic people. If it was, those adventures would lose their sparkle.**

HeHHHhh.


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